From Cairo to Baltimore: Of revolution and riots

What is the difference between a revolution and riot? Perhaps it depends on how close it is to home.

We’ve received a number of submissions about Baltimore and the tensions that led to the riots last week. I wrote last week about the stark unemployment and other factors that exist in the neighborhoods affected by both the death of 25-year-old Freddie Gray and the subsequent violence.

This piece in particular caught my eye from Texas A & M University associate law professor Sahar Aziz on the similarities between Baltimore and the struggles in Cairo:

As I watched television images of youth protesting and buildings burning in Baltimore, it was not the first time that I thought of Cairo – the city of my birth. The images of swaths of young men fearlessly confronting armed policemen brought back memories of Egypt’s 2011 revolution.

The first time Baltimore reminded me of Cairo, however, was ten years ago as a new lawyer working in the courthouse. I recall driving by predominantly black neighborhoods whose level of under-development and poverty were starkly similar to some neighborhoods in Cairo. The contrast in wealth between these areas and the predominantly white middle class neighborhoods was glaring. And yet, such disparities were accepted with little regard for their implications on political stability and the legitimacy of American democracy. I also remember the disproportionately high numbers of black defendants in the court house prosecuted on drug and gun charges that mirrored the selective enforcement of criminal laws against the poor in Egypt.

As I thought of Egypt, I wondered when Egyptians would finally revolt against the economic and political oppression they had suffered for so long. The same thought has likely gone through the minds of advocates for racial justice in America.

When Egyptians revolted, Americans looked on in admiration. They saw millions of people fighting for their freedom against an oppressive regime that had abused and neglected them for decades. Rock throwing youth were labeled brave revolutionaries fighting a brutal police state. As outsiders looking in, it was clear that Egyptians had suffered long enough to warrant their revolt.

But to the Egyptian government, the youth in the streets were thugs and rioters. Government officials declared martial law and accused the youth of threatening national security. When that did not stop the people’s revolt, they pleaded with the youth to stop the protests, cease the violence and work within the system to address their problems.

But a poor Egyptian male knew all too well that the system survived off of his oppression. He and his friends had suffered at the hands of a brutal police force that harassed, abused, and even killed them with impunity. He also knew how little the Egyptian elite and intelligentsia cared about his suffering. The system had given him no option but to fight back to reclaim his dignity and humanity.

As I listen to pundits and government officials condemn the Black youth in Baltimore as thugs and rioters, I cannot help but see the irony. Like their Egyptian counterparts, so many young black men and women in Baltimore have been stripped of their dignity after decades of violent over-policing and state neglect. Years of nonviolent protest did little to reallocate resources to impoverished, inner city black neighborhoods so that black children had access to the same quality of education and life opportunities as other American children. Years of advocacy has barely made a dent in stopping mass incarceration of black and brown men, resulting in the destruction of families and entire communities.

And yet, no one has labeled the Black youth of Baltimore revolutionaries. Perhaps because that would require admitting that our system is oppressive.

If Egypt can teach us anything about Baltimore, it is that oppression is not monopolized by authoritarian regimes and the fight for basic human dignity is universal. No matter how much we may refuse to critically examine ourselves as outsiders looking in, as we did with the Egyptian revolution, what is happening in Baltimore is a revolt against state oppression.